


Smile

by Thimblerig



Series: Scenes From A War [5]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Athos is beset and flustered by people who think he is pretty, F/M, Fic and Podfic, Missing Scene, Podfic, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes, also very tired, fluff and feelings, mild flirtation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-18 00:00:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21935125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: Three scenes from a courtship.
Relationships: Athos | Comte de la Fère/Sylvie (The Musketeers 2014)
Series: Scenes From A War [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/965586
Comments: 17
Kudos: 23





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anathema Device (notowned)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notowned/gifts).



* * *

Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fdl7KvITvpyanaPFP6wQZOjHZxnrx2IC/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) 

* * *

Format: MP3  
Length: 7:56  
Size: 6.96 MB

It was snowing the day Athos saw Sylvie again, bleak midwinter, the city girt with snow and the citizenry garbed tight in close-woven wool and dark furs. The colours of her skirts and cloaks were vibrant against the Parisian crowds, where she sat in a little wooden booth in the marketplace near Saint-Sulpice with an awning of blue-and-white striped cloth overhead and a sheaf of papers laid out in a fan before her.

Athos frowned, his gloved hand settling the mane of his elderly warhorse, he and Roger stopped fast like twinned rocks in the rushing stream of people. The girl was not handing out pamphlets, though, but rather writing on the white pages, marking down words quickly in a neat and elegant hand. She finished marking a page and turned it around gently to face a client, then folded the elderly woman’s fingers gently around a quill pen dripping with dark ink. She smiled softly, encouragingly as the woman made a simple mark, then sanded it and folded it, sealing it as nimble and quick as any scribe of Louis’ Court, before accepting a fee of a princely basket of finger-white skirret roots.

Her eyes passed over the crowd, following the old woman’s starched white cap, until they met Athos’s. One arched eyebrow quirked and she smiled at him, also. It was quizzical perhaps, a touch mocking - but it was _brilliant,_ blooming like a flower. He nodded quickly and felt something move in his face, then looked away, his horse moving with the unspoken urging of his knees. Her voice pealed out across the churning of the market: _“Letters! Business letters, family letters, l o v e letters… Letters read! Letters written!...”_

Face frozen, Athos rode away. He wished he had a reason to look back.

* * *

It was the week after Christmas when Athos walked through the narrow streets of Saint-Antoine. He had doffed his sword, his pistol. The insignia on his pauldron stayed with him always, and his leather doublet. But he walked the streets in humility.

The citizens stared at him, cautious and wary. The area did not nearly have the atmosphere of menace that he had found in the thieves’ slum that was the Court of Miracles, but still he was of uncertain welcome here. He asked questions of the citizens quietly, _“Mademoiselle Baudin, is she here? Excuse me, Monsieur, I’m looking for - yes, Hubert’s daughter. Excuse me…”_

He found her in a little courtyard set around an uncertain well, with a fire set to the side in a hearth of rubble. She was tending to a child’s weeping sore, spreading ointment with gentle fingers and scooping more from a heavy terra-cotta jar that looked much like those stored in Constance’s stillroom. _Hm._ And Sylvie looked up, and she _smiled._

Athos smiled himself, the movement falling unbidden out of frozen lips.

“What brings you to our humble abode, Captain?” she asked, voice low and warm. “We have refreshments,” she added, wiping her fingers with a clean rag and waving towards a battered copper pot set near the fire. It smelled powerfully of cabbage.

“I cannot stay.”

“We’ll get the Flower of the Musketeers by our fire yet,” she said comfortably. “You’re not here to pick up the piecework, surely?”

“No, I - piecework?”

“From your Quartermaster,” Sylvie answered, lips quirking. “Mending the linen.”

Ah. Constance had mentioned something about the Cadets wearing out their shirts, it was true…

“Oi, Sylvie!” A teenage girl, her fire-hot ringlets barely held back by a linen cap, leaned over the rail of a balcony with a striped blanket draped about her. “Pierre and Lupin back from work yet? Mignon was askin’.”

“No, I haven’t seen them!” Sylvie called back, turning her head. Her hair hissed as it slid over her shoulders; her breath fogged in the cold. “I’ll keep an eye out, idiots that they are.” Then she stopped, frozen suddenly.

 _“They will be well,”_ Athos said, low and fierce. He watched her settle herself, shoulders shifting to carry unseen weight. His own shoulders twinged in sympathy - years of other people’s lives to worry about, of too young faces, of inevitable loss. “There was a street fight on the rue de Fossoyeurs,” he continued, “and two residents of this district… came astray there. They are sitting by the fire in our mess, Sylvie, I swear they will be well.” A few bruises, a cracked arm, but Aramis told him it was a clean break, soon mended. The younger boy, hair impudent red as the girl’s on the balcony, had sat with his cheeks flushed and _dared_ the medic to cosset him during the setting of it. The other had asked Porthos how old he needed to be, to join the Musketeers... “I thought it best to bring word discreetly.”

She turned, hair hissing on her shoulders again.

 _“All will be well,”_ he said again, very softly. Her mouth twisted. Athos held out his arm, quiet, waiting. “Will you come and bring them home?”

Sylvie curled her hand around his elbow.

* * *

It was cold, that day in spring, and riding through the night had dampened his clothes beneath his fussy, ridiculous formal armour. Athos gritted his teeth and tried not to squint under his feathered hat as he ushered the fainting Monsieur-le-Prince into the shabby roadside tavern.

On the far side of the crowd, like a snapdragon in a field of thistles, he saw Sylvie.

Despite himself, he smiled.


	2. Podfic

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Click [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fdl7KvITvpyanaPFP6wQZOjHZxnrx2IC/view?usp=drivesdk) to stream or download :-) 

* * *

Format: MP3  
Length: 7:56  
Size: 6.96 MB

**Author's Note:**

> // S3 pretty much skips all of winter. I’m assuming that the big timeskip happens after 3.02 The Hunger, giving us a hefty gap before 3.03 Brothers In Arms takes place in (what I assume is) early spring. That’s a healthy amount of time for some low-key flirting.
> 
> // I also believe that Hubert Baudin, in the manner of many academics of the time, was multilingual and travelled over many parts of Europe, taking his daughter with him. Given the problems establishing literacy among the lower classes at the time, Letter Writer is a valid occupation for someone with a bit of education.
> 
> // A snapdragon is a tall, brilliantly coloured flower that grows in rocky areas of Europe, among other places, and likes to bloom in the cold: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antirrhinum


End file.
